Purple Heart

  Meaghan Finnerty folded her arms across her chest. “I think it means exactly that.”

  He just looked at her.

  “You can’t be sure,” she said. “You’ve said so yourself. That things don’t add up. That you can only remember bits and pieces. Fuchs is right. You can’t be sure.”

  Matt didn’t hesitate. “I need to be sure,” he said.

  Meaghan sighed. “Matt, terrible things happen out there,” she said, gesturing to the invisible world beyond the Green Zone. “I can’t tell you how many men come into this office and can’t remember what happened to them. And then there are the ones who can’t forget. Either way, it’s torture.”

  “Please.” He clasped his hands together, almost as if he were praying. “Help me.”

  She stood up and turned away from him. A few minutes passed. Then she turned around. “I’ll try, Matt,” she said. “But it’s possible that your own mind might be your biggest enemy.”

  He cocked his head sideways.

  “Your mind may be protecting you,” she said. “Blocking out things it can’t process.”

  Matt thought about this for a minute. “Then why do I keep seeing…things?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”

  Matt looked at the clock. His five minutes were up five minutes ago. “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  He swallowed. “You won’t tell anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  He looked away, scanned the walls of her tiny office, then fixed his gaze on a blank spot on the wall. “I was in this alley,” he said slowly. “There was an abandoned car. And a candy wrapper snagged on a piece of razor wire. And shots,” he said. “They ricocheted off the pavement. Then they got closer and I remember plaster falling down on my helmet. And this dog walking right through the whole thing.”

  He paused.

  “All of a sudden, Ali’s there. He’s up at the other end of the alley where the shots are coming from. It’s like one of those dreams where a person shows up somewhere they can’t possibly be and yet in the dream it makes sense?”

  She nodded.

  “And then,” he said, “there’s a flash and it’s like the light lifts him up. It’s real slow and kind of beautiful in a way, the way he floats up into the light. And he looks happy at first. And then…then he starts waving his arms….”

  He couldn’t finish. The sounds of the city drifted in—the rumble of traffic, kids shouting as they chased one another around the yard. Matt swallowed and went on.

  “But I don’t remember shooting my weapon.” Matt covered his face with his hands. “I can remember other parts,” he said. “What I can’t remember is, you know…”

  “Matt,” she said gently.

  He uncovered his eyes.

  Meaghan leaned forward in her chair. “When something is too painful to process,” she said gently, “your mind has a way of burying it.”

  Neither of them could say what “it” was. Shooting a child. Aiming, pulling the trigger, and killing a little boy.

  AT CHURCH BACK HOME, MATT USED TO LOVE SLIPPING INSIDE the confessional booth—a cool, dark box where he knelt in silence waiting for the faint shushing sound that meant the priest had opened the screen between them.

  “Please bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he would whisper.

  He loved the honesty of those few words. As far as he was concerned, that was confession. Everything that followed—a recitation of sins, a penance of five Hail Marys or six Our Fathers—was predictable. But that first phrase—please bless me, Father, for I have sinned—was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it.

  Confessions in Iraq were different, an impromptu talk with a battlefield chaplain or, more often, a late-night conversation with a buddy. But those conversations, where the inky black Iraqi night was lit by the embers of a pair of cigarettes, were somehow more sacred than anything he’d ever experienced in a church back home.

  Secrets were confessed, not in the formal words prescribed by the Catholic Church but in combat slang: I dropped a guy today. I lit up a house. Or just I did some sick shit today.

  Here at the hospital, there was no confessional: just a pair of metal folding chairs face-to-face in a hospital supply closet that had been commandeered for an hour. Matt sat down in the chair opposite Father Brennan and waited for a signal to begin. Meanwhile, the priest sat, his Oakland A’s hat pulled low on his brow, his eyes intentionally fixed on the floor, as if to re-create the kind of anonymity of a real confessional.

  “Please bless me, Father,” Matt said, finally. “For I have sinned.”

  He didn’t feel anything. No relief. Nothing. He didn’t know what to say next. Back home, he would confess to swearing, to taking a soda from the vending machine at work, to being disrespectful to his mom. How did you confess to killing someone?

  Matt wiped his hands on the front of his pants. He took a deep breath. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the closet door was closed, that no one was outside listening in.

  He started all over again. “Please bless me, Father…” He couldn’t finish.

  He closed his eyes and tried to summon up every detail—to punish himself, to get it all out. He imagined the alley, blinding in the midday sun. But the rest—the dog, the sparks hitting the pavement, the overturned car—wouldn’t come.

  Meanwhile, his brain was besieged by random, maddening thoughts: Fuchs saying “You just can’t be sure.” Caroline asking if he wanted On the Go packets of Crystal Light. The year the World Series was postponed because of an earthquake. Was it 1998? Or 1989?

  He opened his eyes. Father Brennan was still there, still bent forward, his eyes fixed on the floor.

  Matt sighed. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said. “I can’t. I just can’t…” His voice trailed off.

  He stood up and paced around the tiny space. He took in the neatly folded piles of sheets and towels, the suture kits in their sterile bags, the bandages and bedpans. Then he looked at the pale, vulnerable skin at the base of Father Brennan’s neck where his tan stopped, as he sat—resolutely, respectfully—staring at the floor.

  Finally, the priest looked up. He took off his baseball hat and began twisting it between his hands. There was a sadness in his bright blue eyes but no judgment, no impatience.

  “I’ll be here,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

  MATT WALKED OUT OF THE SUPPLY ROOM AND TOOK A FEW steps. He stopped, considered turning around to try again, then continued on. He still had twenty minutes before his appointment with Lieutenant Brody, so he stepped outside into the courtyard and sat on the low wall where he and Pete sometimes met for a smoke.

  He got out his notebook and turned to the page where he’d written a new version of what had happened, a version that included what he now knew.

  taxi runs the checkpoint

  Justin and I pursue the vehicle

  we turn down a side road, past the bootleg store

  we get out of the Humvee to give chase down an alley

  we get separated

  I start taking fire in the alley

  I return fire

  Justin picks off the shooter from an upstairs window

  RPG hits wall, Justin drags me to safety

  He didn’t write about what happened when he returned fire. He couldn’t.

  He thought about what Meaghan had said about his brain protecting him from the truth. She’d also said something when he was leaving about how all soldiers struggle with their conscience when they do things in war that they’d never do otherwise.

  All soldiers? Matt wondered. He and Wolf had had long conversations, often late into the night when neither of them could sleep, about what they’d seen and done in Iraq. But some of the other guys in the squad seemed untroubled by it all.

  Figueroa, who had a wife and a kid he sang some Spanish lullaby to when he called home, had no qualms about it. “When you point your gun at someone a
nd pull the trigger,” he said, “shit happens. It’s not a surprise. It’s not pretty, but it’s not something I necessarily want to talk about.”

  Justin just said he tried not to think about it too much. “When the bullets are whizzing by and it’s all fucking chaos and noise, you don’t think about morals or politics or anything. You stop thinking. And just fight. Because, just for those few seconds, it’s simple: If you don’t kill the other guy, he’s going to kill you.”

  But Wolf was the one who surprised Matt the most. “I hate it, you know. I hate this shit. I hate how we came over here to help these people and instead we’re killing them. But you know what else? I also sorta love it, man. When you’re out there with your M16 and your night-vision goggles, you feel like you’re ten feet tall and bulletproof. You are Superman. It’s this primal thing. I love it. And I hate it.”

  Matt missed them, even Charlene, but he especially missed the guys. Their stupid “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” jokes. Their insults. He even missed the way the guys sat around burping and scratching their balls and just being gross. What he missed most, though, was the bravado, the cocky swagger they all adopted when they were shooting the breeze together. It might have been an act half the time, especially when they were heading into a dicey situation, but it was contagious.

  And it was something he could use. Especially since he was due at Brody’s office in five minutes.

  MATT HAD HAD TO RUSH OUT OF THE HOSPITAL, ACROSS THE courtyard, and through the labyrinth of halls to get to Brody’s office, his right leg dragging more and more the farther he went, and so he was sweating by the time he got there. He took a minute to catch his breath, then knocked.

  Brody opened the door so quickly, it was almost as if he’d been standing on the other side just waiting for Matt’s arrival. His office was much smaller than Fuchs’s, more government-issue than former palace: a metal desk and chair, a filing cabinet and laptop. The only personal item in the room was a crucifix on a blank wall behind his desk.

  “Private Duffy,” he said, gesturing for Matt to sit in a chair in front of his desk. He grabbed a file and clicked his ballpoint pen into the ready position, as swiftly as if he were taking the safety off his gun. The friendly, proud-to-meet-you tone of their last meeting was gone.

  “Before we begin…” he said, “let me tell you that the army takes this kind of accusation very seriously. And that we do our level best to get to the bottom of it.”

  Matt swallowed.

  “Let me also explain that you will be held accountable for the facts not as they are in hindsight but as they appeared to you at the time.”

  Matt nodded as if he understood. The words sounded ominous, promising, and bureaucratic all at once. The facts in hindsight? Brody opened the file and began reading. “We understand that you and Private Justin Kane were in pursuit of a driver who had demonstrated hostile intent,” he said, not looking up. “And that you were in advance of your squad without an officer present, due to the emergent nature of the threat and a shortage of officers in your sector at the time.”

  Matt rubbed his forehead with his hand. He tried to remember. Where was Sergeant McNally that day? Had he been at the checkpoint with them? And what did Brody mean, that there was a shortage of officers?

  “We also understand,” Brody went on, “that you and Private Kane pursued the insurgents through the area near the al-Hikma Mosque until they arrived at an alley. At which point you gave chase on foot. The enemy opened fire, and you and Private Kane set up a position in a building across the street from the sniper.”

  Matt tried to keep up with Brody’s rapid-fire recitation while at the same time trying to square what Brody was saying with what he remembered. He still had no recollection of the building they went into.

  “Private Kane neutralized the target, at which point the two of you exited the building to return to your vehicle and make radio contact with your squad,” he said. “Then an RPG was fired in the proximity of your position, immobilizing you in the alley.” He looked at Matt briefly, as if to make sure that Matt understood that he was the “you” he was talking about. “Renewed fighting erupted and Private Kane, with no regard for his own safety, ran through intermittent fire to rescue you…”

  Intermittent fire. Justin hadn’t mentioned any shooting after the RPG went off. Justin had made it sound like the fighting was over once he took out the sniper, that the RPG was a single, parting shot as the insurgents took off. Justin had run through gunfire to save him. Matt was stunned.

  “…during the course of the engagement that day.” Brody had come to the end of a sentence that sounded important, Matt realized, and he tried to focus. “There were, unfortunately, civilian casualties: an elderly man and the youth, Ayyad Mahmud Aladdin Kimadi.”

  Brody paused for a split-second, flipped to a page in the back of the file, then peered at Matt.

  “I understand that you’ve been experiencing some memory problems.” It was a statement but also a question.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “Some difficulties with recognizing dates and times? Some anterograde amnesia?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I think so. Sir.” He thought it was anterograde, not the other one, but he didn’t dare check his notebook, not after what Meaghan had said.

  “And so your recollection of the chain of events would not be considered reliable.” Brody’s tone made it clear that this was not a question.

  Matt held his breath. He had memorized each thing that had occurred that day in the alley as best as he could determine it, using the numbered list in his notebook the same way he’d memorized the World Series trivia. He’d crammed all morning and he was ready, he hoped, to answer Brody’s questions.

  Brody sighed. “It’s unfortunate,” he said. “But this is what happens when insurgents put their own people in harm’s way.”

  Matt nodded. Mentally, he reviewed the wording of the Rules of Engagement. Do not fire into civilian-populated areas or buildings unless the enemy is using them for military purposes or if necessary for your self-defense.

  He also repeated to himself what Sergeant Benson had told them as they were about to enter Iraq. He’d made them all pause at the border and turn off their engines for a little pep talk. “You are going to get shot at,” he’d said. “It’s going to come down to him or you. Better him than you.”

  Brody closed the file and stood up. “Let me tell you about an incident that happened the other day near the Jamila Market,” he said.

  What was going on? Was Brody trying to confuse him?

  “A driver comes to our southern checkpoint, asks permission to park in one of the busiest areas in the market,” he said. “He has three kids in the backseat. Little ones. Says he has to carry something from one of the stalls to his car and he doesn’t want to leave the kids alone in the parking lot.”

  Matt squinted, trying to follow what Brody was saying.

  “Our guys waved him in, helped him park. He walks away. Couple minutes later, the car blows up. With the kids still in the back.”

  Matt winced. He should have realized where the story was heading, but it didn’t matter. He was shocked every time he heard a story like that.

  “These people,” Brody said. “They just don’t value life here the way we do.” He shook his head and went on. “Private Duffy, you know what collateral damage is, don’t you?”

  Matt nodded. It was an army term for all the nonmilitary things that get destroyed by war—roads, factory buildings, sewage plants. Even livestock. It was also a euphemism the army used when one of its bombs ended up killing civilians.

  “Well, that’s what we have here. A classic case of collateral damage.”

  Matt mentally went over what he would say. He would explain about how he was pinned down. How, somehow, he was alone in the alley.

  Brody cleared his throat. “We could spend a year trying to figure out what happened here. And it wouldn’t matter. Because it’s the insurgents who endanger
civilians. By operating in their midst.”

  Matt just looked at him.

  “We can’t go back to the Hikma sector to collect ballistics; it’s become too unstable in the past few days,” he said. “The witnesses, if there were any, have probably already been coached—or bribed or threatened. And the body won’t tell us anything: You look the same if you get killed by an enemy bullet or an American bullet.”

  Matt cringed. He pictured the body bag he’d seen the other day and wondered, for the one hundredth time, what Ali’s body might have looked like.

  Sometime during this speech, Brody had gone to sit down behind his desk. He tapped the on button on his computer and it whirred to life.

  He stared at the screen for a moment or two, then looked up at Matt. “That will be all, Private,” he said. “Time to get back to the business we came here for.”

  And, Matt realized sluggishly, that he was supposed to stand, salute, and leave.

  But it wasn’t until he had left, until he’d traveled down the hall a few steps, that it sunk in that Brody had told him what had happened. Brody hadn’t asked him a single question.

  MATT WANDERED A LITTLE FARTHER DOWN THE HALL, THEN stopped at a spot where several hallways met. He took in the labyrinth of halls, utterly lost.

  A few yards down the hallway to his left, he saw a men’s room. He walked slowly toward it, stepped inside, and considered what to do next. He closed the seat on one of the toilets, sat down, and leaned his head back against the cool marble wall.

  His eyes closed, he tried to understand what had just happened. What had Brody said about Matt’s memory? That his recollection of the chain of events “would not be considered reliable”? Is that why he hadn’t asked Matt any questions? So where did he get all the other information? From Justin?

  Brody had called Ali an enemy sympathizer. But that’s what they always said when a civilian got killed.

  He’d also said there was a shortage of officers that day. Classic cover-your-ass language intended to keep any blame off the higher-ups.